Search unveils grandfather's professional baseball career

One hundred years ago this month, my grandfather pitched a complete-game, 16-inning marathon, a show of professional pitching endurance that surely won't be matched in this age of pitch counts.

By TOM PRIDDYtom.priddy@shj.com

One hundred years ago this month, my grandfather pitched a complete-game, 16-inning marathon, a show of professional pitching endurance that surely won't be matched in this age of pitch counts.The odd thing is, I had to find out about it from a couple of strangers.My grandfather finished his pro career the following year with the Los Angeles Angels, then the equivalent of today's minor league Triple A. How did I find out about that? Yeah, another stranger.That's only part of the story of a young man from rural Arkansas who traveled all around the country in the early part of the 20th Century, but who really knows for sure? Everyone with first-hand knowledge is long gone, and my family never talked about it.This is the sum total of all I knew: “My father once played baseball in San Antonio,” my mother told me on occasion. “He did it to pay for law school.” We have no memorabilia, no glove, no cap, no jersey, no clippings. No nothing.As a kid, I gave that as much credence as if she had said, “My father once played the slots in Vegas.” If my grandfather had been a professional baseball player I surely would have heard of him, right? Baseball players are famous. End of story.But not the end of my interest. Several years ago, when all sorts of historical data began showing up on the Web, I started entering his name in search engines, just hoping for a little family background. He was born Edward Brown Rogers, but generally went by the name of Brown Rogers.Oh sure, I eventually came to appreciate my mother's story. But as a journalist I live by the motto: “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”There on the Google results page, in addition to the mug shot of some kid named Ed Rogers who was busted for drugs in Texas, was a listing that I had been hoping to see. As it turns out, a Texas newspaper website confirmed that my grandfather was a 21-game winner in 1912 for the San Antonio Bronchos in the Texas League. Right there was a tiny photo of my grandfather and two of his teammates in uniform. Pay dirt.The website photo was so small it was impossible to make a decent print from it, so thus began an unsuccessful quest to find a copy of the original. There was no other information to go with it.But that tiny nugget of information has led me on a decade-long search for more and more details, many of which have come to light as old records began to be posted to historical websites.My first discovery led to two acts of kindness by people who didn't even know me.

My unsuccessful search for the original photo led me to sportswriter David King of the San Antonio Express-News. He furnished me with photocopies of newspaper articles about two of my grandfather's biggest games.The San Antonio Light and Gazette reported that in getting the 1-0 win in working a complete 16-inning game against Fort Worth on Aug. 17, 1913, “Rogers…twirled a great game of ball.” The San Antonio Express called it “one of the most brilliantly played games in the Texas League this season.”He had actually surpassed his 16-inning feat already in 1910, when he worked all 17 innings of a 4-3 win over Galveston. The Express reported: “Rogers pitched a magnificent game and his work here set the fans wondering what Atlanta is about to let such a twirler to get away.” He had pitched for the Atlanta Crackers the year before.The Light and Gazette wrote that “the former Cracker was there with the goods, being steady at all times…”From there I went to the archives of the Texas League, where President Tom Kayser provided me with additional details I had never seen before.Finally, just last year, Caleb Hardwick of the Arkansas Baseball Encyclopedia let me know that my grandfather finished his career in Los Angeles and had two brothers who also played professional baseball for several years. I never even knew I had two great uncles, let alone anything about them.But the major mother lode came when Baseball-Reference.com put its minor league archives online. The listing was missing some details, but it contained information I have found nowhere else: the stats from his entire career. It told me he began his professional career in 1907 at age 23 in the Pennsylvania-Ohio-Maryland League, and he played until he was 29.

I can barely imagine a small-town Arkansas boy moving to the Washington, D.C., area just after the turn of the century, but there was more. He went on to play for the Wheeling (W. Va.) Stogies and the Crackers before joining the Bronchos and Angels.With obvious talent, and after pitching 1,054 professional innings, why did he never make it to the Major Leagues? I can only guess, but I have a theory: Playing professional baseball in the early 1900s was a bit like running off to join the circus.By 1913 he had already graduated from — and I assume paid off — law school, and had already married my grandmother in 1911. I suspect it became an embarrassment to the family. I can almost hear my great-grandmother saying, “Brown, you have to give up that foolishness and come back home for good.”After a 1-1 stint with a 2.88 ERA in Los Angeles in 1913, he did just that. He took a 77-70 minor league record back home to Arkansas, opened a law practice and eventually became mayor of Russellville. My mother was born in 1914.He died at an early age in 1932, when my mother was just 18, so perhaps she never knew the whole story, either. Sadly, I never got a chance to fill her in.But now it falls to me to keep the story alive. And, believe me, my grandchildren will hear it directly from me. It's part of our family history now.